


And a Mountain Moves

by evil_bunny_king



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abora Lavellan, Character Study, Gen, Minor Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Nevertheless, years later, after months, seasons and eventually years spent away from the clan, she’d find herself drifting away from the roadway upon a simple shift in the wind, drawn to that heady scent once more. An association of home still embedded in her consciousness, potent once more.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	And a Mountain Moves

Their home tent was always filled with the heady scent of Embrium, no matter where they traveled. Even with the cords of deep mushrooms they’d thread across the tent to dry when the clan edged around the Vimmarks, and the hours that the three of them would spend with the mortar and pestle, grinding Elfroot and Prophet’s Laurel, the subtle spice of Embrium would always linger, steeped into fabric and skin.

Abora had disliked it out of principle, during her childhood. It drenched her memories, undertoning the hours spent memorising plants by sight under her mother’s patient, expectant tutelage - latent with a certainty that with her elder sister having safely ensconced herself among the clan hunters, she would pick up her mother’s mantle, clan Lavellan’s healer-in-training. But to be bound to the camp boundaries, ensnared in the petty politics and concerns of the clan - she could think of nothing worse. Why settle for this when there was a whole world out there- one that the Dalish were a part of, whether they liked it or not?

Yet that stability had been something she’d hoped for, too, when she’d been younger. The home-tent’s spice had been a promise that she’d accepted without thought, clumsily mimicking her mother’s gestures and imagining that she too could feel the prickle of magic in her palm, feel the brush of a spirit between her enclosed fingers, waiting to be coaxed into easing a hunter’s fever.

She had been seven when she’d noticed that her mother’s lessons had shifted their focus to more practical medicine; nine when she finally accepted that she could never truly follow her mother’s footsteps. It was a few weeks before her 14th name day when she’d finally carried her belongings from the family tent to be taken formally under the tutelage of one of the clan’s scouts, the daggers her sister had given her four years before clutched protectively to her chest.

Yet the smell of the Embrium had still lingered months later, implaceable no matter how many times she scrubbed herself raw.

The scent had decidedly soured for her after that.

Nevertheless, years later, after months, seasons and eventually years spent away from the clan, she’d find herself drifting away from the roadway upon a simple shift in the wind, drawn to that heady scent once more. An association of home still embedded in her consciousness, potent once more after the years had smoothed away the old hurts. It was with a touch of self-mockery that once, on her way to a distant conclave arbitrating a debate she would never be fully equipped to understand, she picked an early bud and pressed it between the thick paper sheets of her notebook.

She had, in the end, found the purpose, the fit that she had sought those many years ago. It was just not in her mother’s image, but in her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell I hate choosing titles? This one is from the brilliant ['Run the Banner Down'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S7GRtaYwOA) by Shearwater, which will be a theme for the first two drabbles of this series at least.
> 
> WOW THIS IS ROUGH - in my defense, this was the first thing I'd been able to write in two and a half years?


End file.
